Comment:It is said that we have “to walk in all His ways and to love Him, and to worship the Lord, your God” (Deuteronomy 10:12), and to serve Him.

Answer:It is needless to serve Him if He is Absolute. We just need to serve people, creating for them the upper world. The Creator needs nothing. What can you give Him? He is perfect!

Question: Isn’t there egoism that still manifests itself one way or another in the fact that I serve people?

Answer: In the upper system everything is arranged so that if all my intentions are egoistic, then, first of all I can’t serve people spiritually, and secondly I will receive only a “slap” on the head from others.

And even if I behave correctly and do everything for them unselfishly, nevertheless they will still criticize me as much as they want and thereby will guard me from conceit and pride; I thank them very much for this! However, if they don’t criticize me, it is a problem. This is a punishment from the Creator.[193741]From KabTV program “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/16/16

Question: How can it be that a woman who loves a man doesn’t want to be dependent on him, live with him, or establish a family with him?

Answer: If that is so, what is love? A woman, who loves a man, wants to be with him all the time, constantly; this is a natural emotion.

With a man it is just about the same, but not to such a degree because he has a connection with the Creator, and he must be led by this connection. Only when the right connection exists between him and the Creator and with a woman who is ready to be in connection with him, can he devote time to her.

There exist various additional situations that can be mentioned, like the harem of kings, mistresses, polygamy,etc. This is a system of mutual connection that is not very simple because this is not talking about a man and a woman in our world but about the connection between the desire to receive, which is the feminine inclination, and the intention to bestow, which is the male inclination.

Question: What is the spiritual explanation about the thousand wives of King Solomon?

Answer: The intent is that King Solomon was able to correct desires with an intention in order to receive into desires with an intention in order to bestow on the thousandth level, which is to say this was a very high art and skill on the level of Arich Anpin.

Question: So he didn’t really have a thousand wives?

Answer: No, even though there was polygamy; in those times polygamy was considered a normal phenomenon and women related to it calmly because on one hand, it was human nature and, on the other hand, it was a custom, the foundation of society.

In addition, we must understand that people were not involved with physical, sexual relationships because they were on a level of spiritual development. So they didn’t attribute much significance to physical relationships, as if they could sum everything up. Especially regarding everything that touches upon the continuation of the generation and building a family, the attitude was that it was like an obligation to the higher roots, that we must behave in our world in accord with the level of the higher roots, and nothing more than this.[193297]From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/24/16

Question: Even gay couples can have kids today thanks to IVF and surrogate mothers. How does the Creator allow that?

Answer:There is no room for such questions since the Creator is Light, the upper force, which operates and bestows unto us to the same degree that we need Him. If we don’t need Him, His illumination unto us, unto our egoistic desires, develops us automatically until we are ready to properly and mutually cooperate with Him until we are ready for His revelation.

Therefore, there is no question at all as to whether the Creator wants or doesn’t want, allows, or doesn’t allow anything. We must understand that there is an upper force that has nothing at all to do with us, and there are our egoistic desires.

To the degree that our desires want to resemble the altruistic force, it affects us, but we must always be first. And according to our desire, our minus, we will begin to evoke the bestowal of the upper attribute, which is always second and always plus. This is how it works.

Therefore we should not curse the Creator or reprimand Him for different events in the world. The Creator is an amorphous attribute, which is absolutely serene and cannot be frightened.

We are constantly inside the Creator and by a desire that is focused on Him we can evoke His special bestowal on us. If we focus our minus properly on Him, we will automatically summon His illumination to us through our desire because the Creator doesn’t consider or judge, He doesn’t do anything and does not change.

Therefore we actually change ourselves with all our appeals to the Creator: “Come! Help us!” in order to summon unto ourselves the positive changes of the Upper Light, the upper force.[193495]From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/24/16

The Torah, Deuteronomy, “Ekev,” 10:03 – 10:05: So I made an ark of acacia wood, and I hewed two stone tablets like the first ones, and I ascended the mountain, with the two tablets in my hand. And He inscribed on the tablets, like the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain, from the midst of the fire, on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me.

And I turned and came down from the mountain, and placed the tablets in the ark which I had made, and there they were, as the Lord had commanded me.

This speaks about the same Ten Commandments, but on an entirely different level. It is like saying the same words to a child, an adolescent, and an adult, but all of them will understand differently and will accept and implement the words in different ways.

These commandments are intended for a different generation; therefore, they are different. This is exactly the way this process should happen, and this is how it happened with both Temples when Rabbi Akiva laughed about the destruction of the First Temple and said, “Now I trust that more is exactly what will occur.”

Question: But what was it like for people who saw the tragedy occurring to look at him? The leader of the generation laughing at the very moment when everyone else cried.

Answer: These are two levels of attainment. The problem is that people don’t understand Kabbalists. In order to understand them, a person has to rise to their level. There is no other way. After all, it is said, he who increases knowledge, increases pain. (Ecclesiastes 1:18). In fact, a Kabbalist is the one who worries more than the others, but on the other hand, he also rejoices.

Question:If a generation doesn’t understand the Kabbalist, what was Baal Sulam expecting when he wrote his articles?

Answer: The fact is that there must be some feedback from the generation, and there was none. A Kabbalist mainly works only when he receives a certain task from above.

Baal Sulam didn’t work for the last generation, although he wrote a little bit about it. He lived in a very difficult time, with the creation of the State of Israel, World War II, the Holocaust, and the death of the Jews. He worked specifically to accept and to shape people spiritually at the time he lived here in the land of Israel, and to lay the foundation for the last generation.[193486]From KabTV program “Secrets of the eternal book” 5/16/16

An animal lives according to its nature and doesn’t change. It obeys instincts embedded in its cells and chromosomes, and executes them automatically. An animal doesn’t develop itself or the environment but only realizes its internal program.

However, humans are creatures that have a developing program within them. We came from the animate degree as apes, and apes evolved into humans. By the way, Kabbalistic books spoke about this thousands of years before Darwin’s theory.

Humans differ from the apes radically, in other words, our development is qualitatively new. There is a force within us called the Creator that creates a new creation from us. This force lives within us and develops us.

There is no such force of development in any other level. Inanimate matter doesn’t change at all. Plants change slightly depending on the time of year. Animals multiply and develop slightly, but only according to their internal program, while a human develops through the development of this program itself!

After all, a human develops continuously. He is completely new from one year to another. Every generation is like a new humanity. How is it possible to compare the human who lived a thousand years ago with the one of today? Modern people have a different culture, education, view of the world, perception of reality, mutual relations, and environment. Where did such changes come from? It is from the hidden force within us called the Creator.

This force unconditionally created plants from inanimate matter, the animal from the plant, and people from animals. The same force now acts in us all the time, revealing its development in us. Otherwise, even today, we would have been the same as we were 10,000 to 100,000 years ago.

But we are not the same; we are completely different people. Perhaps we haven’t changed much externally, but internally we are very different from the primitive people in our perception of reality and understanding. The force that is called the new creation is constantly updated in us, and this makes us more special than all of the others.

Therefore, we shouldn’t waste our time on the development of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate, in other words, in building special houses or even developing distinctive cultures, particularly the family, which is on the animate level. Let’s begin to develop and reveal in ourselves this force that develops us!

Perhaps then, we will be able to manage it, use it, and direct it to various new forms. Let’s examine it, and then we will find out to what form we should develop and will promote exactly this development.

Kabbalists have recommend this direction of development to us, and any other development always leads us into crises, disappointment, and a dead end.[193344]From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/30/16

Question: How is it possible to protect children from unhealthy relationships in our world?

Answer: It depends solely and only on education that children acquire, which is instilled not only by their parents but also in kindergarten, at school, on the street, and in groups. Everything depends on the environment in which a child grows. If you set him up for good relationships with others through our world, through the upper world he is provided with some kind of protection.

I cannot say how to accomplish this in every case in life with complete confidence; however, if a person has a good attitude toward others, behaves intelligently and calmly, doesn’t violate traffic laws and doesn’t arouse aggression then both, through the higher management and through mutual cooperation with other people, he will encounter a minimum of problems. A good attitude and openness to others is the most significant protection against abuse, disturbances, and all negative phenomena.

Question: Is the protection provided by a good attitude toward other people enough, even though our world is “dog eat dog”?

Answer: Even when the dogs are trained, they must be approached through feeding and care. The same thing applies to people, even though they are worse.[193136]From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/1/16

Question: Universities around the world have conducted comprehensive studies in the field of education. In North Carolina in the United States, scientists reached the conclusion that everything depends on where a baby is born; in Kenya in East Africa they follow every step that a child takes, whereas in Europe this is considered to be aggressive. Does a single method exist through which it is possible to educate children?

Answer: There can be different ways of educating. But the main thing is to develop a feeling in the child that someone’s “shoulder” stands by his side, creating closeness between people.

The psychological basis of a person may differ, but it is up to us to understand that their fellowship, mutual understanding, and closeness must be developed in humanity, not in a physical sense, but in an internal sense.

We must understand that we are living in an integral environment in which everything is mutually connected. This should be taught from childhood. He must know that only in this manner can humanity survive, and therefore, we must relate to each other well.

Mutual aid, mutual connection, and mutual understanding, these properties must be in the conceptual apparatus of the child from birth! To direct the tiny human toward cooperation with others, we must bring him up properly, even if he doesn’t want this, because habit becomes second nature. But to do this, it is up to all of humanity to understand that we are heading toward disaster.

I am sorry that humanity cannot hear anything. But it doesn’t surprise me because that is our nature. But the fact is that this nature must still be corrected and mankind must understand this and rise above it. In the meantime, unfortunately, it is not realized.

To do this requires a team organized throughout the world so that all of humanity will begin to move toward connection and unity. Otherwise, the world has no chance of surviving.[193150]From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 8/24/16

New Life #767 – The Next Level
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

Today, humanity has reached a unique state, the previous level of development has ended. On the one hand, we have immense abilities, and on the other hand, everything that we have developed works to our detriment. As a result of this, people are in despair and give up.This stage of our development is called the “recognition of evil.”

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches why we are alive and where we must go. Our next form is the form of a “circle,” everyone living in equality, in connection, “as one person with one heart.” What we are missing today is the understanding of the goal of life, what we are living for. Later we will discover that we need to rise above the egoism toward “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

When people will truly be connected with each other, each one will feel a higher, spiritual level of life. Nature didn’t create us connected from the start so that it would be possible for us to develop spiritually independently. When people are connected, their attitude toward others is as it is toward themselves, all are equal and love each other.

For thousands of years people have spoken about the general rule, “And you shall love your friend as yourself.” The wisdom of Kabbalah offers a unique method for its realization.[193317]From KabTV’s “New Life #767 – The Next Level,” 9/6/16